SHAKESPEARE - AN UNGENTLE LIFE

'[A] deeply considered and stimulating book, informed throughout by the author's intimate knowledge of the literature and society of Shakespeare's age... These scenes from Shakespeare's life...offer refreshing alternative points of view that no future biographers will be able to ignore Stanley Wells, TLS 'It is unquestionably the best Shakespearean biography of the new century' Jonathan Bate, Sunday Telegraph ...a model of lucid scholarship which tries neither to beatify nor vilify its subject, but to present [Shakespeare] as a living figure in the heat and the dust of the passing world The Times Katherine Duncan-Jones's constantly illuminating and hugely enjoyable biography restores the author and his plays to bubbly life...Duncan-Jones triumphantly constructs an upsetting trajectory from playful youth to rancorous skinflint, through which art matures even as character hardens The Observer.